1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the data processing field, and more specifically to the provision of an integrated tool development environment.
2. Background Description
Traditional tool development follows the simple steps of creating the text-based source code, and then compiling and executing the code on a specific platform. The increasing complexity of function and integration of tools over multiple platforms means that tool development cannot generally be performed by small groups of human developers. Often the only way to produce a fully functioning application is to make use of specially-designed application development tools in order to build other tools. Today's applications are built using a mix of low level tools such as source editors and debuggers, along with high level builders of user interface, data access, distribution support, and code generators. The applications built in such environments are targeted to run in a multiplicity of execution environments, on various hardware platforms, supporting many distribution mechanisms and data access mechanisms. Developing such applications in the current "state of the art" requires the use of multiple different tools for multiple different vendors, each solving a piece of the over all puzzle.
The ideal is to provide an integrated development environment (IDE) in which information provided by each tool during program development can be shared with other tools, particularly those being used in the same development effort, to avoid duplication and inconsistent interface and function operations. Currently available development tools address only a small subset of this requirement. They typically focus on a source-level, single targeted application, and use a simple file system folder/directory model for their information.
Where the application development tools are tightly integrated, they can often use cross reference tables to share information about the program under development. However in an incremental development environment, the tables can be out of synch with the source code, and frequently contain less information than implied by the source code.
Also, any tool not closely integrated (and this is often the case with tools from different manufacturers) will have to parse the source or the tables, provided the programming language is not a barrier. This parsing exposes the tool either to parsing differences or internal table definitions.